Dear Dad,
Remember when we went on this trip?
That was way fun.
I love this picture because you are laughing so hard.
I miss you. You were my favorite person on the planet.
I’ve been doing some things I would never have done if you were still alive. I think that’s a good and bad thing.
I miss you. Life with out you is like living without an escape clause, like walking the tight rope with no net underneath. Without you I feel like I have no one to fall back on. Which isn’t true. I have people–friends–a support system. But I don’t have any one person like you: who’ll always be there. No matter what.
I miss you. I love you. You were really great at being my dad.
I remember one time when I was home from BYU on Christmas vacation, and you gave me a bowl of slightly overripe grapes to eat. You said they needed to be eaten. And I remember the intense conflict I felt. I don’t like overripe fruit. But I loved you and you asked me to do it, so I wanted to do it. I felt such a conflict. I was never like that in high school; I didn’t care what you wanted me to do. But later, when I was wiser, I did.
I remember that you were always so hard to shop for at Christmas and on your birthday. I would always get you things you never ended up using. Then one year–for your birthday when I was around 16–I framed an old picture of the two of us and gave it to you. I remember that you kept it by your bedside for years. In our house, nothing ever stayed the same. Everything was chaos. If I had given mom that picture, she would have been disappointed and it would have gotten lost within the week. But you could do love. And order. Kindness. Unselfishness. That’s you in a word: unselfishness.
You weren’t perfect. You didn’t understand about humor, and sometimes you were too hard on us. But you were unselfish, Christlike, and repentant. You apologized to us when you lost your temper. You owned your mistakes. I’ll never forget that. I love you for that. And I know you love me.
Thanks for being my dad.
